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Soltek Unveils VIA P4X600 Based Mainboard

by Anton Shilov
12/16/2002 | 09:12 PM

Although VIA Technologies decided to postpone the release of their P4X600 core-logic with dual-channel PC2700 memory support for the Pentium 4 processors until next year because they wanted to add 800MHz QPB support, some of their partners want to start supplying the powerful mainboards as soon as possible. As this Chinese web-site reports, Soltek recently announced its SL-85FRV product, powered by the highly-anticipated P4X600 chipset.

They say that the company will start to sell their newcomer already this year (Soltek does not have a lot of time left, does it?), what is not strange at all, so to speak. VIA and Kentron Technologies want to launch their P4X800 chipset with Quad Band Memory support in the second quarter. So, longer VIA delays its P4X600, less time the latter will have to be sold. Hence, I fully understand Soltek’s desire to launch their SL-85FRV now, without 800MHz Quad Pumped Bus support.<%BANNER[article]%>

The key features of the SL-85FRV look as follows:

Supports Socket 478 Pentium 4 / Celeron processors with 400/533MHz FSB with 3.06GHz clock-speed and above;
Can take advantage of the CPUs with the Hyper-Threading technology enabled;
VIA P4X600 core-logic with VIA VT8235 I/O controller;
4 DIMM slots for up to 4GB of PC1600, PC2100 or PC2700 DDR-SDRAM memory. Dual-channel memory bus support: the memory modules should be identical and installed in pairs.
5 PCI slots and 1 AGP 8x slot;
2-channel ATA-133/100/66/33 integrated controller;
Serial ATA-150 controller from Promise, supporting 2 Serial ATA-150 ports and 1 Parallel ATA port;
USB 2.0 ports;
AC’97 audio solution;
ATX Form Factor.

Nothing is said in regards the price of the mainboard, but, frankly speaking, it should not be too high compared to Intel’s E7205 powered devices. I think if the P4X600 is able to offer comparable performance to Intel’s current dual-channel offering, the solution from VIA will definitely be popular in $130-$170 range.